About the interviews

A video installation in the corner of one of the rooms of the exhibition shows interviews where the stories behind some of the pieces in the exhibition are told. The interviews were recorded by Tracy Sorensen between October 2007 and January 2008.

Vivienne Binns, artist, interviewed on Saturday, October 13, 2007, outside the Bathurst Regional Art Gallery during her retrospective show. She tells how domestic handcrafts have inspired her own art. She takes a broad view of the arts and crafts as an essential human activity, the results of which surround our every waking moment, like the air we breathe.

Gerda Mjadwesch and her son Ray Mjadwesch, interviewed on Friday, December 14, 2007 at Grattai near Mudgee, in the company of Beverley the galah. Gerda and Ray take a trip down memory lane with a box of Hobbytex paraphernalia.

Yvonne Sorensen, artist, interviewed on Sunday November 4, 2007 in her home studio in Wyong. Yvonne mulls over the difference between art and craft.

Hannah Semler, arts administrator, interviewed at Peel near Bathurst on Sunday November 25. Hannah tells us the story of the purple woven wall hanging and the woven cloak her mother, Erika Semla, one of Australia's respected textile artists, made for her.

Cath Barcan, artist, interviewed on Sunday November 4, 2007, in the Tudor Inn motel opposite the Hamilton Bowling Club, where Cath celebrated her 40th birthday the night before. Cath talks about the string art lamp that reminds her of the string art on the walls of her childhood bedroom.

Margaret Smith, co-director of Bathurst's Hayloft Gallery in the 1970s was interviewed on Monday, October 22 at her home in Bathurst. She talks about the "grotties", ceramic figures created by Michelle Fermanis for an exhibition at the gallery.

Karen Woodhall was interviewed at home in Canberra on Saturday, December 8, 2007. She talks about the enjoyment and she gets from spirography, macrame, origame and the creation of personalised greeting cards.

Joy Engelman, artist, was interviewed on Friday, October 19, at her flat in Orange. She tells us about the macrame necklet made by Julia Walker. Necklets like these featured in a fashion show in Sydney with iconic Australian fashion designer Jenny Kee. Due to a last minute technical hitch, her piece did not appear in the video installation on show in the gallery.

Christine McMillan, artist, was interviewed at her home in Kandos in central west New South Wales on November 14, 2007. Christine's current arts practice includes creating pieces using echidna spines and wrapping trees in gauze. She learned needlework from her Scottish grandmother and continues to draw on her early love of traditional women's crafts.

Gabriella Hegyes, artist, was interviewed in her studio at Sodwalls, near Lithgow, on Wednesday January 23, 2008. Gabriella grew up in a whitewashed cottage in Szeged, Hungary, before fleeing the communist regime in the 1970s. Her grandmother taught her to crochet, and crochet remains an important element in her art practice.

Joanne Bright was interviewed on the site of the old drive-in theatre on Mt Panorama, Bathurst, on Tuesday, November 13, 2007. Joanne tells how she collected Kelly's bread bags from neighbours which she then crocheted into a coat. The only time she wore it out was to the drive-in.

Chirpy Cheep Cheep

I remember this song being played at a backyard barbie in the early 1970s.

Check it out on YouTube

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=iT1y8xwl2HA&feature=related

Spirograph commercial

See this 1973 commercial for the Spriograph on YouTube

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=LbvmKzf_wr4

The female unicorn - the beginning

Well, I've ordered a tube of lilac Hobbytex paint and some of that non-woven fabric that looks like the stiffening stuff Mum used to sew into collars and cuffs. Yes, there's still a Hobbytex factory in Sydney (www.hobbytex.com.au). I've been quietly slaving over Photoshop, creating an image I'm going to title The Female Unicorn. It stars Denise (who is making a Manwich in the previous blog) on a rearing unicorn waving a feminist flag. Yes, Denise has gone through a huge process of self-examination and self-realisation since that day with the Manwich. After this, things have to move off the computer and into physical reality as I trace the design and work out a sort of paint-by-numbers colour scheme. Can't wait until the tube of lilac turns up!

The Race Weekend

It's the race weekend in Bathurst. With the sound of the races in the distance, we sat around Karen's gorgeous little laminex kitchen table and worked out some stuff. The soundscape would be different in each room and you'd be able to hear all three simultaneously as you wandered through the space. Karen has created a series of Manwich posters and furry things with bands of plastic, very 70s, very now. I'm starting to book in my interviews. The first is on Tuesday, the last is on Wednesday, November 21. I want to interview up to 12 people in that time.

macramé

Macrame Lives

Reverberation as afterlife

I just heard this phrase on Radio National in a discussion about an exhibition on surveillance. A man talking about walking into a cathedral, hearing a choir, and even after the choir stopped, the overhang that still filled the space, suggestive of afterlife. It's that silence - impure silence, overhang - that follows the moment. The quality of the air when the voices stop. The voice is lost, but this exhibition gathers together the lost notes, the notes floating on the air three decades later, after the Hobbytex tin was closed for the last time. There had to be a last time the tin was used, rediscovered decades later, rusted on. The tiny noise of the last metal-on-metal sound of the sprung metal hoop closing over the top of the tin.